View from Here: Recent Acquistions

View from Here, a selection of sixteen works newly acquired by LACMA, borrows its title from a series of photographs by Christina Fernandez. Shot in various locations in the southwestern United States—including the internment camps of Manzanar, California, and the desert museum of artist Noah Purifoy—Fernandez’s interior views onto obscured landscapes register deeply in a time of “sheltering in place.” Themes of interiority and vastness, isolation and collectivity, stasis and movement recur across this group of artworks and find resonance in our current cultural moment.

 

Evocative portraits by Huguette Caland, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Calida Rawles draw equally on lived experience and imagination. Both Betye Saar and Lonnie Holley, who make assemblages from cast-off materials, use cages to convey the literal and metaphoric terrors of containment. EJ Hill’s Lesson #3, part of an eponymous series, dissects the chalkboard as a one-way transmitter of knowledge. Other artists in the exhibition depict water as a site of suspension or explore the conflict that lies within domestic objects or constructs of home. Representing a range of generational and global perspectives, these sixteen artworks are critical additions to LACMA’s collection. Together, they underscore the importance of bringing multiplicity to bear on art history and art institutions.